1. A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants.
2. Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
3. The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
4. You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
5. Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse
will happen to you the rest of the day.
6. Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will
discuss the one you are least interested in, and say nothing about the other.
7. When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never
talking about themselves.
8. If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being
a damn fool about it.
9. There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car
when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
10. Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said
there would be so many.
11. Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back. This is what I'm doing wrong.
12. Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."
13. Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
14. To err is human, to forgive is not company policy.
15. Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing.
16. Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
17. The last person that quit or was fired will be the one held
responsible for everything that goes wrong - until the next person
quits or is fired.
18. There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but
there is always enough time to do it over.
19. The more pretentious a corporate name, the smaller the
organization. (For instance, The Murphy Center for Codification of
Human and Organizational Law, contrasted to IBM, GM, AT&T ...)
20. If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are
really good, you will get out of it.
21. You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
22. People are always available for work in the past tense.
23. If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
24. At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to
the number of pens that person is carrying.
25. When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
26. You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
27. No one gets sick on Wednesdays.
28. When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more
easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger
handle this?"
29. The longer the title, the less important the job.
30. Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the
repairman arrives.
31. An "acceptable" level of employment means that the government
economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
32. Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
33. All vacations and holidays create problems, except for one's own.
34. Success is just a matter of luck, just ask any failure.
35. If anything can go wrong, it will.
36. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
37. Everything takes longer than you expect.
38. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one
that will do the most damage will go wrong first.
39. Left to themselves, all things go from bad to worse.
40. If you play with something long enough, you will surely break it.
41. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously
overlooked something.
42. If you see that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for,
will promptly develop.
43. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
44. Mother Nature is a bitch.
45. It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so
ingenious.
46. If a great deal of time has been expended seeking the answer to a
problem with the only result being failure, the answer will be
immediately obvious to the first unqualified person.
47. If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
48. Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
do as it damn well pleases. -- Harvard's Law
49. Never replicate a successful experiment. -- Fett's Law
50. Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- von Braun
51. It is not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White
52. In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information
available is inversely proportional to the importance of the
decision. -- Cooke's Law
53. Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they always point
upwards from the floor-especially in the dark. -- Ross's Law
54. The number of adjectives and verbs that are added to the
description of a menu item is in inverse proportion to the quality of
the dish. -- Calkin's Law of Menu Language
55. Don't force it; get a larger hammer. -- Anthony's Law of Force
56. Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner
of the workshop. -- Anthony's Law of the Workshop
57. Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
(1) If it should exist, it doesn't. (2) If it does exist, it's out of
date. (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
58. Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive
young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in
the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better looking and
richer male friend.
59. Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize
them into a committee -- that will do them in.
60. DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one
you don't want hits the paper.
61. Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean
windshield lands directly in front of your eyes.
62. Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam,
you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home
exam, you will forget where you live.
63. Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most
obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
64. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself --
historians merely repeat each other.
